Monday, March 31, 2008

Google Code Snippets Onebox

Harry sent in a screenshot of what seems to be a new Google “onebox” he stumbled upon: direct code snippets. A onebox is a special Google result* that usually polls information from another Google search service, in this case, perhaps Google Code Search. On the other hand, it may also be possible that Harry is seeing something done by a browser extension, though that may not be very likely; I asked Harry and will add a follow-up in either case.

*Note originally the term “onebox” referred to Google’s initiative to only offer one box for all uses to the searcher, and not the specific special hit in the result.

Update:
Harry says “there’s no add-on causing that behavior. To be sure, I just performed the same search in Internet Explorer 6, and the same result came up.” Harry was searching for
session_set_save_handler, though I can’t reproduce the onebox here. (Perhaps it’s US-only or still being rolled out, or just experimental at this point.)